News

Squash Trophy Wives and $20,000 Tables

In David Foster Wallace's famous essay on the porn industry, "Big Red Son," he remarked that some stereotypes are true: the typical adult video producer "really is the ugly little man with a bad toupee and a pinky ring." So if you choose to attend the black-tie U.S. Squash Hall of Fame Gala at the Hotel Pierre, where some tables cost $20,000, you really shouldn't be surprised to find yourself surrounded by rich, white people who live in the nicer quadrants of Connecticut and New Jersey, and who tell insidey jokes about "Apawamis," whatever that is.

One forgets just how small, and homogeneous, the American squash world is. Everyone went to private school (that's where the squash courts are), everyone attended a private college (see above), and there's no point in asking where their children go to school (previous point) or college (previous point). Inevitably, it will be somewhere decent, e.g. Hobart, in the Northeast. The men are generally fit and handsome, work in finance - the loss of Bear Stearns as a squash sponsor is a big deal in Squashworld - and are married to square-shouldered blondes with excellent posture.

Indeed, at the gala, I sat at a table with three attractive blonde wives (not my own, alas), one of whom casually mentioned that she had participated in an Ironman race not so long ago. Translation: I can kick your ass, scribbler boy, if it comes to that. Her husband looked like he could kick my ass, too, and I behaved accordingly.

But I am way off topic here. Four hundred people showed up for the Gala, which will doubtless be declared a huge success. That is about half the number that showed up for the 2004 centennial celebration of U.S. Squash, the sport's governing body here. The reasons for the falloff are obvious: It's the economy, stupid.

The proximate purpose of the gala was to celebrate the Squash Hall of Fame, and to honor four new inductees. Squash people take the HoF seriously, but you really have to work at it, just as you have to work at taking the Soccer Hall of Fame seriously. The Soccer Hall is in Oneonta, New York, once home to the largest locomotive roundhouse in the world. The Squash Hall is currently hidden in a corridor behind a squash court in Yale's Brady Center, awaiting a real home.

So what was cool about the gala? There were plenty of genuine squash legends in the room. Peter Briggs, the famous Harvard player whom some view as the Nick Bollettieri of squash, emceed the event, and pointed out the luminaries among us: top-five player Natalie Grainger; Trinity College coach Paul Assiante, still the winningest coach in the NCAA; U.S. Squash chairwoman Jeanne Blasberg; Julian Illingworth, currently the top-ranked American player; and others.

The main event was an appearance by the current World Squash Federation president Jahangir Khan of Pakistan, deemed by many to be the greatest squash player who ever lived. (You may want to consult this useful field guide to the squash-playing Khans.) Khan is most famous for his five-and-a-half year, 555-match streak of victories, quite possibly a sports record. He is also famous for losing what some think was the greatest match ever played on American soil, to Mark Talbott, in the final of the 1984 Boston Open. Jim Zug devotes ten pages to a stroke-by-stroke commentary of that match, in his 280-page history of squash.

In halting English, Khan re-expressed the oft-expressed hope that squash will finally join the ranks of Olympic sports next year. When older players of his caliber discuss squash's eternal status as an Olympic pariah, there is always an element of sadness. Khan would probably have several gold medals to his name.

That's enough about the gala, Alex. Tell us about you. Well, I finally met John Nimick, the Hall of Famer/promoter who has erected portable squash courts both in Grand Central Station and in Boston's Symphony Hall. He seemed like a cheery guy. Earlier this year I wrote a column more or less calling out U.S. Squash for confiscating the U.S. Open from Nimick and Boston, and moving it to New York, where it crashed and burned, or hit the tin, as we players like to say. Boston uber alles!

I also met another Bostonian who came south for the festivities - Greg Zaff, the famous Williams College player who has done more to diversify the ranks of U.S. squash players than anyone alive. A decade ago, he started the country's first "urban squash" program - an effort to recruit inner city kinds into the classroom and onto the squash court -- at Northeastern University. The program been successfully copied in New York and Chicago. I would describe Zaff as intense, brooding, smart, and of course ambitious for his program. I would also describe him as not dressed in formal wear. Surrounded by preppy penguins, Greg was wearing a sienna-colored suit-and-tie combo.